Remembering dad: A Father's Day gardering tribute

After surviving triple bypass surgery in 1993, I wrote a column about Dr. William Messinger as a tribute to the man who was not only my father but the person I followed through the flower and vegetable gardens and his small orchard of apples, peaches, plums and pears.

It is because of him that I garden.
In his last year, he was on dialysis interspersed with small strokes and congestive heart failure. His doctor, a longtime friend, wanted to give him enough time to get one more crop of tomatoes in. He died on June 10, 1996, a tired, frail man. And sadly, he never got his last garden in.

But this Sunday is Father’s Day, so please read on. Garden with your children. It is a gift they will have forever and for many Father’s Days to come.

About 55 years ago, a family living in a second story apartment in Queens made the big jump to the suburbs. It was only some 10 miles, but it felt light years away.

On moving day, the van was full and the family and dogs were in the black and chrome Buick after saying the last good-byes to friends and neighbors.

At this point, the closest the Messingers had come to a garden was the nearby park with its blacktop, cement and sporadic weeds. When we arrived at our new house, with just over an acre of land, we just couldn’t wait to pile out of the car and walk around the property.

The land was naked except for the wooded boundaries and there was a clear line of sight to our neighbors in the front and back. My sister and I ran into what would become our backyard. To my sister’s delight, I quickly sank up to my knees in the muddy topsoil. I was stuck in my boots and screaming in terror, unable to get free from the deep mud.

Someone did pull me out, but I still have vivid memories of being lifted from the ground while the strong hold of the mud refused to let me go.

I was all of 5 years old and this acre plus became my jungle, my forest, my classroom and my best friend while my father became my teacher. Set near the glacial terminal moraine, the land was flat except for some long-ago deposited boulders that became playthings.

One such boulder (which over the years became a large rock as I grew older and bigger) was set right between the twin trunks of a large, wild cherry tree. The boulder was a giant stepping stone, and the tree a ladder to the heavens.

As city folk, no one knew anything of poison ivy—which grew up the cherry tree—nor did anyone bother to tell us that the cherries tasted awful and stained anything that came into contact with them.

My father worked hard and long hours as a cardiologist, but every free moment he had went into planting and gardening. He read gardening books and catalogs and I tagged along as he visited local garden centers and Garden World in Queens. He became a self-made horticulturist and over time became well respected for his green thumb. I was always one step behind him.

It became apparent after a year or two that he simply didn’t have the time to cut the lawn each week with his smoke-spewing 18-inch reel mower so he hired a man by the name of Andy Bart to cut the grass. I remember that Andy had huge hands. And his skill, as he guided his Locke mower around the trees and back and forth, was mesmerizing.

When it was time to weed, I was allowed to help. To this day, I still remember where I buried Andy’s favorite grass sheers and pruner.

My father planted and tended on weekends. He put in roses, forsythia, blueberries, quince and other fruit trees. He planted a large bed of what was then called “funkia,” later known as plaintain lilies, and now as hostas. He also started a vegetable garden. And yes, the corn was as high as an elephant’s eye.

My mother, on the other hand, did nothing in the garden. She never pulled a weed or planted a seed. But in her defense, she made jams and jellies from the quince and blueberries, pies from the apples, and pickled green tomatoes and cucumbers. Nothing was lost from all of my father’s efforts.

One fall night we were all asleep when all of a sudden there were explosions in the basement. I don’t recall who was first downstairs but rather than the expected screams of horror there were laughs and giggles.

The basement ceiling was dripping wet and there was a heavy aroma of garlic and spices. A few weeks earlier, my mother had put up the last of the season’s green tomatoes, which were being pickled in large Mason jars. Something though had gone very, very wrong and the tops had been blown off the jars with great force as everything went splat against the ceiling.

It was one of the few times that I remember the very straight doctor losing himself in uncontrolled laughter.

At some point several years later, my father set me loose. I don’t know if he was tired of my constant questions or the incessant “Daddy, what can I do, daddy what can I do?” but I was finally given my allotment. Across our driveway was a forsaken quagmire of weeds, poison ivy and honeysuckle measuring about 20 feet wide and 50 feet long. My father said it was mine and the only rule was that I had to ask before cutting anything down.

In addition, he gave me another waste area that he said could be my vegetable garden. Both became my pride and joy. And as my contemporaries played little league, I conquered the jungle.

My father watched from a distance.

And there, just across the drive, my father continued to plant, transplant, harvest, weed and spray. Aside from his work and his family, he lived for his garden. And somehow he 
survived all too many years of my leaving his tools out in the rain, breaking them and losing them.

One fall I dutifully raked all the oak leaves from my allotment and put them into a pile, just as I’d done with my father in years’ past, and burned the leaves. That’s what we did with leaves in the 1950s. When the fire was done and the ashes cooled—“Are you sure that the fire’s out, Andrew?” he asked—I collected the ashes into the wheelbarrow and brought them to the neighborhood compost pile.

Later that evening, just before dinner, we smelled smoke and began looking around the house. From my second-story bedroom window I could see the huge orange and yellow flames reaching for the sky as the compost pile became an inferno.

The ashes hadn’t been cold enough. My father said nothing. He didn’t have to.

As my father got older, the gardens got smaller. But he never quit and never lost interest. Until the very end, the trunk of his car probably still stunk from the manure he would pick up at a nearby farm.

When he was 82, the property was just too much and he and my mother sold the house and moved into a large apartment complex nearby. I thought that would be the end but each resident got a small garden plot to work in on the complex’s grounds. In no time he had one planted.

From the balcony many feet above the ground, he could see his garden. And to his very last days, I know that few things gave him more joy than planting, growing and seeing and tasting the fruits of his labors. Happy Father’s Day. Keep growing.